1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910462633903321

Autore

Blix Göran Magnus <1971->

Titolo

From Paris to Pompeii : French romanticism and the cultural politics of archaeology / / Göran Blix

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Philadelphia : , : PENN, , [2009]

©2009

ISBN

0-8122-0130-2

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (319 p.)

Disciplina

930.10944

Soggetti

Archaeology - France - History - 19th century

Archaeology - History - 19th century

Archaeology - Philosophy

Archaeology and history

Romanticism - France - History - 19th century

Secularism - France - History - 19th century

Electronic books.

France Intellectual life 19th century

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (pages [277]-297) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Introduction -- Chapter One: Neoclassical Pompeii -- Chapter Two: The Antiquarian Comes of Age -- Chapter Three: The Archaeological Turn -- Chapter Four: The Specular Past -- Chapter Five: Body Politics -- Chapter Six: Lost Worlds and the Archive -- Chapter Seven: The Uses of Archaeology -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- Acknowledgments

Sommario/riassunto

In the early nineteenth century, as amateur archaeologists excavated Pompeii, Egypt, Assyria, and the first prehistoric sites, a myth arose of archaeology as a magical science capable of unearthing and reconstructing worlds thought to be irretrievably lost. This timely myth provided an urgent antidote to the French anxiety of amnesia that undermined faith in progress, and it armed writers from Chateaubriand and Hugo to Michelet and Renan with the intellectual tools needed to affirm the indestructible character of the past. From Paris to Pompeii



reveals how the nascent science of archaeology lay at the core of the romantic experience of history and shaped the way historians, novelists, artists, and the public at large sought to cope with the relentless change that relegated every new present to history. In post-revolutionary France, the widespread desire to claim that no being, city, culture, or language was ever definitively erased ran much deeper than mere nostalgic and reactionary impulses. Göran Blix contends that this desire was the cornerstone of the substitution of a weak secular form of immortality for the lost certainties of the Christian afterlife. Taking the iconic city of Pompeii as its central example, and ranging widely across French romantic culture, this book examines the formation of a modern archaeological gaze and analyzes its historical ontology, rhetoric of retrieval, and secular theology of memory, before turning to its broader political implications.